Teen creates positive platform for hip-hop

Jarea is quite comfortable dropping a lucrative lyric to a pulsing beat.

She likes playing basketball, and is a loyal fan of Marky Mark and The Funky Trunks. She also knows what it is like to fall asleep with piercing hunger pangs.

Jarea isn't the average 16-year-old.

The Corning teen was used to not having food or money while living in poverty in Las Vegas with her parents. She's witnessed her peers battle the trials of pregnancy, parents divorcing, homelessness and going days without a decent meal.

Everyone she knew, it seemed, had given up.

"They were thinking that was the end, that Vegas was the end and they weren't going to achieve their dreams," she said in a phone interview.

Not Jarea. She may have started from the bottom but she's still working her way to the top. These troubling images of youth living in Las Vegas inspired her to write. Jarea, whose real name is Amanda Real, channeled her struggles into her music and created a positive platform.

Now living in Tehama County and being homeschooled, Jarea has more time to cultivate her career and continue writing.

Her rhymes are potent, filled with uplifting messages of hope and encouragement for her listeners. Her lyrics are also free from profanity or any derogatory statements.

"I wanted to inspire the youth but not just the youth in general. I want everybody to enter my shows and for them to see what a good style of rapping — a clean style of rapping — instead of just hearing cussing where parents of the family will just not approve," she said.

Her album titled "On the Rise" drops Sept. 6. Jarea will be performing, along with other local artists, at the MANAS Artspace, 1441 C Park Ave., for her CD release party.

The 10-song album featuring original tracks is Jarea's first full-length CD but she has spouted rhymes for years and has more recently streamed her music on ReverbNation.com.

"I never met someone so hungry who wanted to do this so bad," said Chico hip-hop artist Willby Diamond.

Diamond, who also helped produce Jarea's album and is featured on one track, met the teen earlier this summer outside a show venue. She was selling CDs and merchandise, and was really motivated, he said.

"I've been in Chico for 10 to 12 years and I've yet to meet a female hip-hop artist," Diamond said. "She brings nothing but positive. She's real positive trying to overcome struggles."

Jarea is currently ranked No. 3 among Corning rap artists on ReverbNation.com and has been performing in some all-ages venues around Chico.

"I love this career," she said. "I've wanted to do this since I was in Vegas."

One of her goals is to get signed by a major label and take her sound on the road.

"She's the next up-and-coming artist, she's on her grind more than me," Diamond said.

Though the passionate artist is nudging into the hip-hop scene, Jarea still has a realistic grasp that an education will trump any Grammy.

As she continues her hip-hop passion, she's determined to graduate from high school and stresses to others obtaining a goal like hers and going to school is very plausible.

"Rapping and acting isn't going to last forever," she said. "You have to have something to fall back on."